


The Turning Wheels

by heihua



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, 弱虫ペダル | Yowamushi Pedal
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 11:48:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heihua/pseuds/heihua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The deserters of the Fire Nation. The last water bender of the Southern Water Tribe. The boy encased in ice. These things, alone, amount to nothing but together they become something more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Turning Wheels

**Author's Note:**

> This is all Zee-chi's fault. That is all I have to say.

Naruko Shoukichi is barely four when his uncle Jin deserts the Fire Nation.

He remembers his uncle’s back, tall and broad, rippling with the muscles of a seasoned army general as he packs away what few precious belongings he has. Shoukichi sits behind him, his mind not comprehending nor understanding the heavy silence that fills the room. When his uncle finishes packing his bag, he turns to face Shoukichi and with a face grimmer and even more stern than the Fire Lord’s, asks Shoukichi to run away with him.

"I can no longer hold pride in being a fire bender of a country that feeds upon such violent flames of war," his uncle says. Shoukichi does not understand the meaning of half those words but he feels the weight of them in his uncle’s heavy hand upon his shoulder. "I do not wish for you to be engulfed in these flames, Shoukichi but neither do I want you to abandon everything that you know and love. That is why I am asking you now."

Even though what his uncle asks is unreasonable—is all too cruel—Naruko does not hesistate. Every time his uncle asks him in the future, through sleepless nights on the run, through days pedaling for change on the streets of villages run down by war, through the humid, sticky summers sleeping under tall winding trees in swamps and through the frigid, merciless winters that they only survive through meditation and pure willpower, if he had been too cruel to Naruko, Naruko would scoff and tease his uncle about growing old and senile.

In the present, Naruko merely grins a wide toothy grin that shows off his fangs and eagerly asks his uncle where they are going.

That night, a message is delivered to the Fire Lord.

The great “Dragon of the West” General Tadokoro Jin and Prince of the Fire Nation Naruko Shoukichi have disappeared.

 

 

 

Imaizumi Shunsuke is the only water bender in the Southern Water Tribe.

He has known this since the day he was born. His whole tribe has known this since his birth and all of them are terrified. As isolated as they are from the rest of the world, even they know of the Fire Nation’s hunt.

The hunt for benders.

Even before he understands, even before he has managed to learn how to walk, even before he has learned how to talk and even before he is able to comprehend the voice of the water that called to him even in his mother’s womb, his bending is sealed.

He is forbidden to ever go near the edge of the tribe that is the closest to the ocean and denied from listening to the tales of the different Avatars born from their village with the other children. He is three when he succumbs to the water’s voice and tries to water bend. His father yells at him, furious and forbids him from ever doing it again. His mother desperately pleads for him to as well, telling him it’s “for his own good” and “things will be better this way.”

Imaizumi does not understand why he is forbidden from doing something that feels so utterly natural to him, so essential to his being. So in secret, he practices.

In the deepest parts of night where there is only the moon above him, Imaizumi stands upon a plain of ice and water bends. He listens to no master but the rush of the ocean and the crackle of snow beneath his feet. He does not whether he is strong or weak, only that he is doing what is right to him, what comes naturally to him and in his solitude at night no one can tell him otherwise.

But a self-taught water bender can only go so far and it is when he turns fifteen, that he realizes the limits of his strength.

The day after his fifteenth birthday, Midousuji Akira of the Fire Nation attacks his tribe. He descends from the iron hull of his ship, long gangly limbs and pitch-black eyes that are even colder than the breathe of winter that descends upon their tribe during the harshest blizzards. He takes one look at their village, at the elderly women, the middle-aged mothers and the small children that don’t even reach his knees before he throws his head back and laughs.

"Gross, gross," he cries out between peals of laughter as he swings about his arms with abandon. The children draw back behind their mothers, frightened of the stranger’s erratic behavior. "All of this is soooo gross."

He cackles and lurches forward, his fingers all but brushing against the snow on the ground. “Is there really a water bender here, in this pathetic excuse of a village?”

"There is," Imaizumi cuts in, his voice strong and clear like the water that rises up around him as he stands in front of Midousuji. "And that’s me."

Midousuji grins, all teeth and cold intent just as Imaizumi strikes his arm forward, water shooting straight at Midousuji—

Only to be redirected away.

Imaizumi stares, shocked as a collective gasp rises from the people of his tribe.

Midousuji cackles, his entire body shaking with his mirth. “Weak, you’re so weak!”

Midousuji suddenly brings his arms up and the snow around him immediately melts to water and rises up in a wave behind him. “Now it’s time to say good-bye, little weakling water bender.”

The wave crashes forward and Imaizumi is pushed back, far back enough that he loses his balance upon the edge of the cliff that overlooks the ocean, and falls.

The last thing he hears before his body is swallowed by the ocean is Midousuji’s cackle as his long thin form hovers above, a shadow that swallows the sun.

 

 

It is with the help of luck and survival instinct that Imaizumi does not drown there. He does not remember how he manages to do it, but he survives.

His body lands upon hard ice and he gasps for air, the pain he feels in his body nothing compared to the humiliation he feels.

_Weak, so weak!_

He grits his teeth as those words continue to echo in his mind. Midousuji had so easily bested him without even trying because Imaizumi had never faced another bender before. Imaizumi had been content knowing he was able to bend but that contentment had almost cost him his life. Now he can only wallow in the humiliation and regret upon an ice burg god knows how far from his village.

He wants to scream, wants to howl and curse at the world until—

_Crack._

Imaizumi sits up, immediately on alert. His eyes scan the area around him as he hears more crackling sound. It is an all-too familiar sound for one who had lived their entire life surrounded by ice, snow and water.

It is the sound of breaking ice.

Slowly, Imaizumi’s eyes move to the center of the ice burg. There, a great boulder of snow stands but as the noises continue, he sees the snow beginning to slide off the boulder to reveal a sphere of ice. Silently, Imaizumi watches in awe as a yellow glow emerges from the center of the ice and spreads to fill the sphere. In the yellow glow, he spies a small figure encased in the ice. As he watches on, he sees their eyes open and the yellow light shoots upward as a beam into the sky.

Like a beacon, signifying the coming of great change.

Imaizumi covers his eyes as the light grows blinding and when it fades, he looks to see the sphere of ice had melted and the figure that had belonged inside the ice now lay sitting upon the ice.

Imaizumi stares.

The stranger stares back.

"H-hello," the stranger stutters, looking as confused as Imaizumi. He is a rather short boy who wears yellow-colored garb that Imaizumi has never seen before and looks to be about the same age as Imaizumi.

"Who are you?" Imaizumi demands, the only thing he can think of to ask in a situation like this.

"O-oh." The boy looks around a bit, still trying to adjust. "I’m Onoda. Onoda Sakamichi."

He nervously smiles at Imaizumi. “What’s your name?”


End file.
